Naturalism and Religion

by Rudolf Otto

There is then a threefold religious interest, and there are three corresponding points of contact between the religious and the naturalistic interpretations of the world, where, as it appears, they are necessarily antagonistic to one another. Arranging them in their proper order we find, first, the interest, never to be relinquished, of experiencing and acknowledging the world and existence to be a mystery, and regarding all that is known and manifested in things merely as the thin crust which separates us from the uncomprehended and inexpressible. Secondly, there is the desire on the part of religion to bring ourselves and all creatures into the “feeling of absolute dependence,” and, as the belief in creation does, to subordinate ourselves and them to the Eternal Power that is not of the world, but is above the world. Finally, there is the interest in a teleological interpretation of the world as opposed to the purely causal interpretation of natural science; that is to say, an interpretation of the world according to eternal God-willed purposes, governing ideas, a plan and aim. In all three respects, it is important to religion that it should be able to maintain its validity and freedom as contrasted with naturalism.

But while religion must inquire of itself into the [pg 042] reality of things, with special regard to its own needs, there are two possibilities which may serve to make peace between it and natural science. It may, for instance, be possible that the mathematical-mechanical interpretation of things, even if it be sufficient within its own domain, does not take away from nature the characters which religion seeks and requires in it, namely, purpose, dependence and mystery. Or it may be that nature itself does not correspond at all to this ideal of mathematical explicability, that this ideal may be well enough as a guide for investigation, but that it is not a fundamental clue really applying to nature as a whole and in its essence. It may be that nature as a whole cannot be scientifically summed up without straining the mechanical categories. And this suggests another possibility, namely, that the naturalistic method of interpretation cannot be applied throughout the whole territory of nature, that it embraces certain aspects but not others, and, finally, that it is distinctly interrupted and held in abeyance at particular points by the incommensurable which breaks forth spontaneously out of the depths of phenomena, revealing a depth which is not to be explained away.

All these possibilities occur. And though they need not necessarily be regarded as the key to our order of discussion, in what follows we shall often meet them singly or together.

The Mystery of Existence Remains Unexplained.

1. Let us begin with the problem of the mystery of all existence, and see whether it remains unaffected, or whether it disappears in face of naturalistic interpretation, with its discovery and formulation of law and order, with its methods of measuring and computing. More primary even than faith and heartfelt trust in everlasting wisdom and purposeful Providence there is piety; there is devout sense of awe before the marvellous and mysterious, before the depth and the hidden nature of all things and all being, before unspeakable mysteries over which we hover, and abysmal depths over which we are borne. In a world which had not these, and could not be first felt in this way, religion could not live at all. It could not sail on its too shallow waters, or breathe its too thin air. It is indeed a fact that what alone we can fitly speak of and love as religion—the sense of mystery and the gentle shuddering of piety before the depth of phenomena and their everlasting divine abysses,—has its true place and kingdom in the world of mind and history, with its experiences, riddles, and depths. But mystery is to be found in the world of nature as well. It is only to a very superficial study that it could appear as though nature were, or ever could become, plain and obvious, as if the veil of Isis which shrouds its depths from all investigation could ever be torn away. From this point of view it would make no [pg 044] difference even though the attempt to range the whole realm of nature under the sway of inviolable laws were to be immediately successful. This is expressed in the first of our main propositions (p. [35]).

In order to realise this it is necessary to reflect for a little on the relation of “explanation” and “description” to one another, and on what is meant by “establishing laws” and “understanding” in general. The aim of all investigation is to understand the world. To understand it obviously means something more than merely to know it. It is not enough for us to know things, that is, to know what, how many, and what different kinds of things there are. On the contrary, we want to understand them, to know how they came to be as they are, and why they are precisely as they are. The first step towards this understanding is merely to know, that is, we must rightly apprehend and disentangle the things and processes of the world, grouping them, and describing them adequately and exhaustively.

But what I have merely described I have not yet understood; I am only preparing to try to understand it. It stands before me enveloped in all its mystery, and I must now begin to attempt to solve it, for describing is not explaining; it is only challenging explanation. The next step is to discover and formulate the laws. For when man sifts out things and processes and follows them out into their changes and stages he discovers the iron regularity of sequences, the strictly defined lines and paths, the inviolable order and connection [pg 045] in things and occurrences, and he formulates these into laws, ascribing to them the idea of necessity which he finds in himself. In so doing he makes distinct progress, for he can now go beyond what is actually seen, he can draw inferences with certainty as to effects and work back to causes. And thus order, breadth of view, and uniformity are brought into his acquaintance with facts, and his science begins. For science does not merely mean acquaintance with phenomena in their contingent or isolated occurrence, manifold and varied as that may be; it is the discovery and establishment of the laws and general modes of occurrence. Without this we might collect curiosities, but we should not have science. And to discover this network of uniformities throughout all phenomena, in the movements of the heavenly bodies and in the living substance of the cell alike, is the primary aim of all investigation. We are still far away from this goal, and it is more than questionable whether we shall ever reach it.

But if the goal should ever be reached, if, in other words, we should ever be able to say with certainty what must result if occurrences a and b are given, or what a and b must have been when c occurs, would explanation then have taken the place of description? Or would understanding have replaced mystery? Obviously not at all. It has indeed often been supposed that this would be the case. People have imagined they have understood, when they have seen that [pg 046] “that is always so, and that it always happens in this particular way.” But this is a naïve idea. The region of the described has merely become larger, and the riddle has become more complex. For now we have before us not only the things themselves, but the more marvellous laws which “govern” them. But laws are not forces or impelling causes. They do not cause anything to happen, and they do not explain anything. And as in the case of things so in that of laws, we want to know how they are, whence they come, and why they are as they are and not quite different. The fact that we have described them simply excites still more strongly the desire to explain them. To explain is to be able to answer the question “Why?”

Natural science is very well aware of this. It calls its previous descriptions “merely historical,” and it desires to supplement these with ætiology, causal explanation, a deeper interpretation, that in its turn will make laws superfluous, because it will penetrate so deeply into the nature of things that it will see precisely why these, and not other laws of variation, of development, of becoming, hold sway. This is just the meaning of the “reductions” of which we have already spoken. For instance, in regard to crystal formation, “explanation” will have replaced description only when, instead of demonstrating the forms and laws according to which a particular crystal always and necessarily arises out of a particular solution, we are able to show why, from a particular mixture and because [pg 047] of certain co-operating molecular forces, and of other more primary, more remote, but also intelligible conditions, these forms and processes of crystallisation should always and of necessity occur. If this explanation were possible, the “law” would also be explained, and would therefore become superfluous. From this and similar examples we can learn at what point “explanation” begins to replace description, namely, when processes resolve themselves into simpler processes from the concurrence of which they arise. This is exactly what natural science desires to bring about, and what naturalism hopes ultimately to succeed in, thereby solving the riddle of existence.